Menstruation is a taboo topic in Japan. Girls are taught it’s an embarrassing subject that’s indecent to talk about in public. Plus in Japan, endurance is still considered a virtue. For these reasons Japanese women, even as adults, believe that they should just put up with feeling unwell at that time of the month and not tell anyone. Unicharm Sofy, Japan’s leading brand of feminine hygiene products, was concerned by this state of affairs. It wanted to make it okay to talk about menstruation. Then people would be better able to share knowledge and information on the subject. Which would increase demand for high-quality feminine hygiene products.

We produced Japan’s first TV talk show about menstruation, designed to be viewed by households all over Japan.

In the years since the emergence of the #MeToo movement, the subject of feminism and menstruation has assumed strong political and social overtones. That trend has swept Japan as well. But the upswell in interest on social media failed to spread to the general public. The echo chamber effect got in the way. Unicharm Sofy, Japan’s leading brand of feminine hygiene products, was determined to tear down the barrier.

The objective was to foster social change through the power of entertainment and, by escaping the echo chamber effect, to get society at large talking positively about menstruation. We concluded that we could make the most impact by teaming up with a national TV station and producing content that would reach a large audience — precisely because the Internet and social media are becoming ever more influential.

The show’s title was Menstrual Camp, to make it sound like something fun that anyone was welcome to take part in. It was designed in green. Red was rejected as suggestive of menstrual blood. The brand color, blue, was avoided as well.

When it was announced that the show would air, the media — and social media — went wild. Besides a pair of female Japanese comedians and a female YouTube star, the show was to feature a well-known male celebrity. Once that was revealed, the news of the upcoming program set a record for the most page views in the history of TV Tokyo’s official website. Public expectations were thus maximized.

The show created a sensation all over Japan, trending on Twitter despite airing in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. The acclaim was so overwhelming, in fact, that TV Tokyo uploaded the show to YouTube, which it almost never does. There it clocked 1.5 million organic views. Then, in 2021, a book version of the show was released by a major publishing house in response to popular demand. We thus succeeded in bringing a wide range of stakeholders on board.